Sonnet 60 Death Quotes

Even though it appears to be talking mainly about time, there are already hints of death in the first quatrain of Shakespeare's poem. The most obvious hint comes in the use of the word "end" in Line 2, but we think that there might be another, earlier hint, in the use of the phrase "pebbled shore." Doesn't the idea of this final destination filled with stones make you think of a graveyard? Or is Shmoop just being morbid?

Here, Shakespeare portrays death using tragic irony—because it strikes at exactly the moment when we feel most powerful, when we have "crawl[ed]" our way from "Nativity" up to "maturity." Bummer. The indignity of all this is brought home by the fact that the sun is blotted out by "eclipses" instead of simply setting, like it normally does. That ain't no way to go.

In these lines, Shakespeare uses some especially harsh language and vivid imagery to convey just how much of a Bad Guy time really is. This amps up the emotion and gives us a stronger sense of how angry and despairing the speaker is.

Now the emphasis is on the fact that time destroys even the best things in nature—the "rarities" can be thought of as things that are especially valuable, because they are rare. From the context, we can guess that he's probably not talking about things like gold and jewels, but rather something even more valuable: treasured fellow humans, who are all headed toward death at one point or another.

In Line 11, he was telling us how all the best things in nature die, thanks to time. Now he tells us that, in fact, everything that stands will be destroyed by time. Given the context of quatrain 3, which focuses mostly on agriculture and vegetation, it wouldn't be crazy to take stands as referring to things that grow, i.e. things that are alive. What can we say? Time's really an inclusive kind of guy.

Here, the poet shows that death is not quite as all-powerful as it seems. Even though the poet himself will die, and so will the person he loves, the memory of both of them will live on in the poet's verse. The speaker isn't stupid enough to think they will live forever this way—the shadow cast by that last image of time's "cruel hand" rules this out—but he isn't going to stop hoping either.